While American leaders have been preoccupied with sectarian strife in Iraq, the rising threat from Iran, the controversy over having the United Arab Emirates run U.S. port facilities, and plummeting public confidence in both parties, another ominous danger has been gathering: international schemes for “innovative sources of financing” — a euphemism for global taxes.

Unless prompt action is taken by Washington, it is a safe bet that such initiatives will become a widely employed means of imposing burdensome levies on American citizens and businesses. “Globotaxes” will enable the United Nations to fund activities, operations, and priorities — including, in all likelihood, many our government and taxpayers would otherwise oppose.

No less insidious will be the effect on our sovereignty. Advocates of such international tax schemes make no secret of their ambition to redistribute wealth and to advance their longstanding goal of world government.

The brazenness and ambitions of the globotaxers has been laid bare by Cliff Kincaid, the president of America’s Survival, Inc. and a contributor to War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World. Thanks to his new report entitled “UN Boss Kofi Annan Hails ‘Courage’ of France and Other Nations Pushing Global Taxes; UN Report Proposes $200 Billion in International Revenue,” every U.S. politician from President Bush on down has been put on notice: All other things being equal, we are about to be taxed without representation — a prospect that produced a revolution in this land once before and that must be met with no-less-determined American opposition today.

Highlights of Kincaid’s report on the “special international conference” held — where else? — in Paris from February 28 - March 1 include the following:

Enthusiasm the conferees expressed for a U.N. report that proposed taxation of air transport and airline tickets, currency transactions, carbon emissions (gasoline) and arms sales;

The seemingly widely shared support among attendees for the position advanced by Peter Wahl of the German non-governmental organization World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED) that taxes on international currency transactions are “ready for implementation”;

Support for international taxation schemes by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions which represents 155 million workers and 236 affiliated organizations (including its U.S. affiliate, the AFL-CIO) in 154 countries and territories;

The representation at the U.N. conference of major U.S. charitable institutions such as the Clinton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;

The participation in meetings of the “New Rules for Global Finance Coalition” by American groups including George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Oxfam America, the U.S. Catholic Conference, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars;

The admission by NGOs driving the globotax movement that: “Our support to the launching of pilot mechanisms is set in the wider framework of calling for the implementation of a real international taxation system. We do not consider pilot mechanisms as mere innovative tools to fund development but as an embryo for global redistribution mechanisms.” (Emphasis added.)

As Kincaid’s report makes clear, the next steps in advancing the globotaxers’ agenda is likely to be this summer’s G-8 summit meeting chaired by Russia, and the two preparatory meetings this spring to be attended by each governments’ senior finance ministry “sherpas.” Last year, these meetings produced language that began to compromise the United States’ historic opposition to international taxes.

Given the uses to which the United Nations can reasonably be expected to put any tax-levying authority it secures — including freeing itself from the constraints associated with its historic reliance on member contributions and, most especially, the American contributions that have provided roughly 25 percent of the U.N.’s budget — it is absolutely imperative that the Bush Administration and the Congress adamantly oppose any globotaxes and, if necessary, reject their application to American citizens and enterprises.